c.Figallo

Archive for August, 2009

Most of my clients come to me wondering which social applications they should adopt and faithfully follow. Where can they get the most traction with their customers, communities and markets?

It’s a constantly changing environment, with some social platforms very obviously popular and on the media radar (Facebook and Twitter), others working at more general but still influential levels (online video, wikis).

Since adoption and adaptation require investments in time by people on payroll, these clients are not inclined to gamble on technologies that won’t survive the very competitive Jungle of Social Apps.

The history of the Web so far has been one of rising and falling dominant platforms. There’s not much reason to think that will change. So it’s always interesting to see Gartner’s latest Hype Cycle where its analysts place the day’s concepts, programs, genres and technologies on a curve that includes features like the Technology Trigger, the Peak of Inflated Expectation, the Trough of Disillusionment and the Slope of Enlightenment. If you make it to that upward slope, you can look forward to the unexciting Plateau of Productivity.

Read Write Web reflects my feelings about Gartner’s curve when it points out that

Overall, this report is an interesting high level view of the state of technology. It’s quite business focused though, so Gartner perhaps overlooks some of the more exciting new consumer Web trends that we’ve been writing about this year on ReadWriteWeb: real-time Web, Internet of Things, mobile web, to name a few.

Pew Internet published an update on one of its Internet Life surveys that showed a steady increase happening in “the percentage of adults who look online for information about mental health issues” over the past two years.

From 2002-2006, online searches for information about mental health issues remained relatively stable, around 22%. In 2008, however, the percentage of internet users to look online for information about depression, anxiety, stress or mental health issues rose to 28%, a statistically significant increase.

Anil Dash makes good case that the revolutionary, game-changing approach to using the Internet that is represented by Google’s Wave technologies, may not catch on simply because it requires such a shift from the way the Web has organically evolved over the past decade. The Web and its applications have been following a path of incremental progress, while Wave asks that many assumptions and habits be discarded in favor of an approach that may very well offer advantages, but is an abrupt departure from what Anil calls “the Web Way.”

It’s impossible to project how the world and our use of the Internet might change for the better if everyone switched over to Wave. There are many technological leaps being proposed to us these days that would require a similar social disruption, from battery-powered vehicles to everyone switching to mass transit and living in eco-villages. Good for us, good for the planet, but asking a lot in terms of adaptation and adjustment.

And yet, we need look back only 15 years to a time when only a small population had made the leap to the Web, and there were no pocketable cell phones. We are a very adaptable people if we have a good enough reason to change.

Maybe Wave will build a bridge to make the transition smoother than it would need to be today.

One of the necessities and products of social networking is trust. Without a minimum level, no one would interact through the Web, and through building relationships at an acceptable pace through these networks, most people can establish enough trust  with selected others to do some sharing or exchange of valued stuff.

So how can trust improve the environment? Combining social networking with carpooling  might be a good starting point.

Too many cars on the road with only a driver inside. Too much carbon pumped into the atmosphere. Too much money being spent on car maintenance and fuel. Mass transit isn’t the answer for everyone. So that leaves carpools.

The New York Times reported on a startup called Zimride that, in the classic carpooling model, “connects drivers with riders looking to carpool to class or work.” But carpooling has always suffered from the perception that one’s fellow passengers might not turn out to be tolerable for the ride to and from work.

Zimride’s  founders are betting that green consciousness combined with the familiarity and trust gained through social networking will make their service worth using. Facebook thinks they have a good idea and has invested in the new company.

I’m working with my client, the Farmer-Veteran Coalition, to reach out to more veterans, farmers and supporters via the Web. I maintain their website and blog – build on WordPress, and I’m working with Deputy Director Gail Wadsworth to develop email campaigns for this new organization.

Using Salesforce to build the web-to-lead intake forms, I’ve enabled our three “customer” groups to contact us, describe their needs or services offered, and join our email list. Salesforce, in turn, allows us to generate the lists for email campaigns, which MailChimp sends out and tracks, feeding back in to Salesforce.

All of these services are free to non-profits (WordPress and Salesforce) or exceedingly cheap (MailChimp). We’re also using Google Apps to manage our communications and documents – another free service.

What’s most amazing and appreciated is that each of these companies have adapted their products to interact smoothly with the others. This vertical integration of independent platforms is one of the hallmarks of today’s social Web.